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Monday, June 22, 2009

The Friday Slog (Again, Only On A Monday Three Years Later)

[Editor's Note: Written three years ago in June. I guess it's never going above 70 in June forever.]

{Author's Note: My foot really hurts.}

Endless dreary rain.

It was more interesting when it was raging down like a monsoon. Now it's just limitless, piddling, annoying dismal dripping.

The sky is dishwater, the ground coffee grounds under the sink. The sodden leaves weigh down the branches, and the trees slump like mourners. The birds sleep in.

The ground is sated, and more. Every little seam and pinhole in the basement weeps the water flung on the ground outside a week ago. It's an assault, but the worst kind; a siege, slowly but inexorably finding the weakness in your subterranean parapets. The sump pump has become the central theme in my life.

There's often a marvelous moment, late at night, when it first starts to rain. You're warm and comfortable, it's late or early, and the rain, gone for too long, reappears with a little sizzle on the windowsill, and then the steady drops drum on the roof, and you drowse and dream of creek, the river, the ocean.

That's ten days ago. Now the sound of the rain is like the tramp of an occupying force, implacable, smothering, brutal and cold.

The windowboxes are aquariums. The toads drown in the window wells. the mosquitos hatch, and hatch their plots for the summer, when they will remind us of the awful rain long after it's gone and we miss it.

The grass is as green as Cambodia. Water glints through the underbrush, reflecting the dull sky from the most unlikely places. It seems like it will never end.

And sure as age, and death, and taxes, and the turning of the earth and the rising of the sun, on the day it's over, I'll get a postcard from the town, announcing the water ban.

4 comments:

I live in sunny New Mexico. And I mean sunny. We have about 320 bright days a year. Rain coming on, or even the sound of a distant thunderclap, causes me to stop everything I'm doing. I go outside and inhale deeply. Here, the sky is so clear you can see a storm from 50 miles away, then you've always got plenty of time to take in the laundry and roll up the windows. I do find the green of back east a startling and intoxicating zone to be dropped into. That smell of verdant green wafting through the air is non-existent in these parts. I'm driving your way to attend a wedding in New Jersey on the 28th. Airports are like police stations with airplanes. I'd rather drive and watch all of America enjoying summer county by county. I hope it's not as wet as you've described by the time I get there.

Hmmm, sweet summer rain. Send some our way (central MO)! We're in the upper 90s, heat indices (if you believe them) over 100, and our A/C is out, motor blown, part will take 2-7 days to get here. So here we sit with fans on in a house that's as hot as outside.

On to other topics - we're anxiously awaiting the arrival of our 10-finger step stool!

If my wife is telling the truth, you have 2-3 winging their way to Jefferson City (the capital of MO, if you remember 3rd grade) since your offer went out. We are putting 5 out of 6 people in the house through college or parochial school so your normal list prices are a bit out of our reach, but your special on foot stools seemed, well, special, so they became belated presents for Mother's Day, etc.

Keep on keepin' on...You have an audience, whether you believe it or not...

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About Me

I lost my job making glass eyes for merry-go-round horses back in my youth. I decided to become a mercenary commando soldier, you know, hired gun, but unwisely chose the Salvation Army as my outfit. I never got to kill anybody, and I've got tinnitus in my right ear from the bell now.